Olympics: Ragtag Canadian men's hockey team jelled at just the right time

GANGNEUNG — Derek Roy never heard the buzzer. It was all too frantic in the final seconds.

He was scrambling for the puck, searching for a man he had to cover, eyes open and eyes wide and heart beating and, in his words, “still battling and slashing people.”

And then he saw everybody on the ice, his teammates jumping over the boards and up and down on the ice, and he knew and he smiled and finally, he relaxed.

Team Canada arrived at the Olympic hockey tournament on precisely the right night, precisely the right time. They will play for a medal — the question now, which colour. And it doesn’t hurt that just like in 2002 in Salt Lake City, instead of having to face Sweden in the semifinal game, they will get an underdog, Germany.

Suddenly, this collection of some-known, little-known, bounced-around hockey mercenaries is favoured to go to the gold-medal game when an hour or so before that it wasn’t known if their Olympics would be over.

That’s how tight this tournament has been. That’s how little there has been to choose between these dumping and chasing and trapping teams playing low-scoring hockey without NHL players.

But finally, after wondering who this team was, what it was, and how it was coming together, these players looked and played like Canada. Like the Canada we’ve come to know. The colour was right. The effort was right.

The name on the front of the jersey mattered so much more than the name on the back.

It isn’t pretty, this kind of hockey. It never is. But we’ve seen this so many times before: Dumping pucks. Hard on the forecheck. Finishing checks. Blocking shots. Cycling the puck. Wearing down the Finns. Winning the battles for loose pucks. Playing desperate. Playing disciplined. Being defensively sound and systematically proper.

The old Canadian textbook. Dave King used it in 1992 and Tom Renney used it in 1994. And all that it entails to historically make Canadian hockey different and better than the rest of the world. This was the template on how to win before Sidney Crosby and Carey Price.

The plan did change a little early in the second period because Ben Scrivens was injured and Kevin Poulin came in cold off the bench to play goal. Scrivens didn’t allow a goal; Poulin didn’t allow a goal and made several difficult saves, although the shot total of 15 was reasonably low in almost 36 minutes.

“It was contagious,” Roy said of the numerous little things Canada required to succeed. “One guy does it. (Poulin) just stepped in there. We wanted to minimize what he had to do. You’re not going to win them all pretty. We’re not going to five-nothing our way to the finals. We just have to keep grinding and grinding.”

And grinding some more.

Eric O’Dell understands. For four years in the Ontario Hockey League and five years in the American Hockey League and the last two years playing for Sochi of the KHL, that’s been his hockey life. Hanging on and not giving up. The only way he knows how to play.

He came to this Team Canada as the fourth-line centre, barely. That’s hardly a position of prestige on a team searching to find a scorer. But this is how it works when Team Canada has it clicking. O’Dell was on the ice for almost every moment the top Finnish centre, Petri Kontiola, was on the ice with his dangerous winger, future Nashville star Eeli Tolvanen.

All O’Dell managed with his linemates Maxim Lapierre and Rob Klinkhammer — and occasionally Christian Thomas replacing Klinkhammer — was to win faceoffs, control the play, limit Tolvanen’s explosiveness, shut down Kontiola, and in the first minute of the third period, win a faceoff that enabled Canada to score its only goal.

O’Dell has found his stage, with a cut on his nose, blood running down the side of his face, and a faceoff win that was the assist on Maxim Noreau’s slapshot goal, the second score of the tournament for the hard-shooting defenceman who played six NHL games before eventually winding up in the Swiss Hockey League.

“We came here to represent our country and go as far as we can,” said O’Dell, 27. “That was the goal.” A bounce, a rebound, a deflection and it could have been Canada going home with nothing to show for this Olympics. Now anything is possible. Anything becomes possible in hockey when you have unexpected difference makers like O’Dell.

And in the final 85 seconds of a one-goal game, Roy dove to the ice, landed on his belly, swung wildly and desperately at a loose puck, watched one teammate block a shot, then his offensive winger, Rene Bourque block another. And with 74 seconds to go, after an icing, Finnish coach Lauri Marjamaki inexplicably called time out. It made no sense. The Canadians were exhausted and bent over and the Finnish coach bought them some time. Fifteen seconds later, Canadian coach Willie Desjardins called his time out. He made sure he had enough centres on the ice in case two men got kicked out of the faceoff circle and the Canadians, tired, scrambling, but hard on every puck, held on for the shutout and the victory.

“It’s fantastic,” O’Dell said. “I never ever thought this Olympic opportunity would come. But to be here, and to be in this situation, with this group of guys, it’s tough to put into words. I just know this feels great. This is amazing.”

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